Water-wheel gate



Nov. 6 1923. 1,472,924 LYNDON WATER WHEEL GATE Filed 001:. 4. 1921 1 [MM 13 m gififi INVENTOR Patented Nov. 6, 1923.

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LAMAR LYNDON, OF NEW YORK, N. Y.

' WATER-WHEEL GATE.

Application filed October 4, 1921. Serial No. 505,419;

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, LAMAR LYNDON, a

i citizen of the United States, and resident of New York, in the county and State. of New York, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in lVater-Vheel ..,Gates, of which the following is a specificathoroughly as to secure a perfect contact,

.;and, further,the operating mechanism comthe gates are closed.

slightly longer than that of some other gate, a

prising the connecting links and pivots is made with great accuracy, there will be no uniform and complete shutting off of the water flow, which should be the case when If one gate point is or if the thickness of all of the gates is not exactly the same, such longer, or thicker, gates will make contact before all other gates around the periphery of the water wheel can close, and no further movement of the operating mechanism can take place because the mechanical limit of motion will have been reached. On the other hand, the machining of each gate and accurate adjustments of the various operating parts of the mechanism form a too costly operation and, in ordinary, commercial types of water wheels the use of such means is not even considered. As a result, a great lack of operating efliciency is prevailing in practice, it being customary to place the gates in position, work the shifting'ring until various high spots of the gate bodies and extra long points of various other gates have been located, then chip and file the gates until some semblance to complete closure of all the gates is effected. As a matter of fact, however, this process of adjusting inequalities in the gates being far from satisfactory, there is always a considerable leakage through the wicket gates as they are made today, which results in a continuous loss of water through water wheels which are delivering no power, i. e. when the gates are supposedly tightly closed. Furthermore, this leakage flow is L usually great enough to keep a water wheel,

which is attached to an electric generator,

' continuously in motion, even after gate closure, and, 111 such a case, it becomes necessary to provide some extraneous means-for,

bringing the water-'wheel, and its'attached generator to rest. In some instances, mechane ical brakes have been used for this pur-' pose, in other cases, generator fields are fully excited, so that induced eddy currents will act as an electro-magnetic brake and finally stop the rotation of the unit.

My invention is designed to eliminate all chipping and filing, all adjustment of the various parts of the operating mechanism,

and applies to any type of wicket gate. An important feature of my invention is that it not only eliminates the necessity for such mechanical and adjusting operations, but, at the same time, eliminates all water losses as well as the need of extraneous apparatus for bringing to rest units that have. been taken out of service. Other useful-features of my invention will be made apparent from the detailed description thereof.

Referring to theaccompanyingdrawings:

Figure 1 is a section of a standard water wheel, showing the arrangement" of wicket gates and the operating mechanism thereof. Figure 2 is a detail View of two adjacent wicket gates.

Referring particularlyto Figure 1, wherein the full lines indicate the general 7 arrangement of the parts when the wicket gates are closed, and the dotted lines, when these gates are open, 1 is a section of the water wheel casing, 2 is one of the wicket gates, mounted therein on a pivot 3, the

I ends of the gates being attached to the shift ring 4 by means of links, of which 5 is the one corresponding to the gate 2. The gates are provided with deflectors, such as 6, to give proper direction to the flow of water. A connecting or shift rod 7 serves to move the shift ring 4 and thereby open or close the gates. The gates are made of cast iron, steel, or other suitable metal. Approximately along the line where the oint ofone gate makes contact with the a acent gate, at closure, the metal in the body of the gate is grooved out through the entire-width of.

the gate and the space thus formed is then filledwith some soft material, such as babr bitt metal, as indicated at 8 on Figure land,

by the same notation, inthe detail Figure 2. The inserted soft metal or othersoft material capable of resisting the action of water has justenough plasticity to allow the gate point to cut into it and make tight contact between two consecutivegates.

When the water wheel is assembled, it only becomes necessary to close the gates as tightly as possible, and then strike with a hammer or malletthose'of the gate points which make contact with adjacent gates before contact is made and closure effected all around the periphery of the wheel, the hammering of such gate points and the slight,

but suflicient, plasticity of the soft material under them allowing other gates to close, this simple operation being continued until all the gates are tightly closed; This con dition of tight closure \i' ill be attained even if the so called gate point by which is meant the thinner endof tne gate, is not truly straight from one edge to the other of the gate. 7

While the soft material inserted in the gate body is preferably some metal, such as lead or babbitt, I do not limit my invention to'sof-t metals, any material which fulfills the conditions of permitting agate point to be driven into it without injury to the gate and which will withstand the action of the water flow, being obviously within-the scope of my invention. For instance, certain kinds of wood, if driven into dove tail formed slots made in the gate body, would meet the requirements. Nor does my invention preclude other ways of driving the gate points into the soft material than hammering, since the same result would be obtained by cutting out of the inserted soft material enough to form a seat for receivin the adjacent gate point.

rlaving fully described my invention, I claim l. A wicket gate for water wheels, made of a comparatively hard material and provided with a strip of softer material, which strip is inset in a portion of said wicket gate and forms the seat for one end of the next adjacent gate cooperating therewith.

2. A wicket gate for water wheels, having a portion made of a material capable of resisting the action of the flow of water and of sufiicient plasticity to allow the surface of said portion to become slightly depressed under impact.

3. A. wicket gate for water wheels, mad of comparatively hard material and having a strip of softer material inset therein, said. inset material being of suilicient plasticity to permit the harder material of an adjacent gate to be forced into the softer strip.

4. In a water wheel, wicket gates, each gate having a strip of comparatively soft material inset therein and of sufiicient plasticity to allow the tightening'of contact between consecutive gates all around the periphery of said water wheel by forcing gate 'ends into said strips of soft material.

Park Row Bldg, New York city, N. Y. September 15,1921.

LAMAR LY NDON. 

